Robotics

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Robots are already in widespread use in manufacturing and warfare. You see them increasingly in hospitals, warehouses, even homes. The mainstreaming of robotics presents a number of interesting puzzles for administrative, tort, and other areas of the law.

CIS has emerged as a national leader in exploring the intersection of law and robotics. Our staff has published on a variety of topics, including autonomous driving, the domestic use of drones, robotics and privacy, and liability for personal robots. We have held several events around artificial intelligence and robotics, including the annual Robot Block Party for National Robotics Week that draws thousands of visitors.

Dr. Asaro is Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York City. He is the co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and has written on lethal robotics from the perspective of just war theory and human rights. Dr. Asaro's research also examines agency and autonomy, liability and punishment, and privacy and surveillance as it applies to consumer robots, industrial automation, smart buildings, aerial drones and autonomous vehicles.

Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former research director at CIS. A nationally recognized expert in law and emerging technology, Ryan's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired Magazine, and other news outlets. Ryan serves on several advisory committees, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Future of Privacy Forum.

Patrick Lin is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group, based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he is also a philosophy professor. He has published several books and papers in the field of technology ethics, especially with respect to robotics—including Robot Ethics (MIT Press, 2012) and Robot Ethics 2.0 (Oxford University Press, 2017)—human enhancement, cyberwarfare, space exploration, nanotechnology, and other areas.

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If your pet dog Hans takes a selfie, does he own the copyright? A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Ninth Circuit”) is instructive. It says that a monkey can’t own the copyright to his selfie. The reason? Only humans can own a copyright under U.S. law. But who owns artificial intelligence (“AI”) created artwork? This entry addresses that issue.

Following Uber’s fatal crash in Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey is attracting attention for what he did and did not do. This is not surprising; as I noted in 2016, Arizona's governor decided to embrace Uber’s vision, for better or for worse. This discussion, however, tends to elide the important question of his actual legal authority.

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Should Google, a global company with intimate access to the lives of billions, use its technology to bolster one country’s military dominance? Should it use its state of the art artificial intelligence technologies, its best engineers, its cloud computing services, and the vast personal data that it collects to contribute to programs that advance the development of autonomous weapons?

The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) at the UN has just concluded a second round of meetings on lethal autonomous weapons systems in Geneva, under the auspices of what is known as a Group of Governmental Experts. Both the urgency and significance of the discussions in that forum have been heightened by the rising concerns over artificial intelligence (AI) arms races and the increasing use of digital technologies to subvert democratic processes.

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The term “hacking” has come to signify breaking into a computer system. A number of local, national, and international laws seek to hold hackers accountable for breaking into computer systems to steal information or disrupt their operation. Other laws and standards incentivize private firms to use best practices in securing computers against attack.

Self-driving cars are here. More are on their way. Major automakers and Silicon Valley giants are clamoring to develop and release fully autonomous cars to safely and efficiently chauffeur us. Some models won’t even include a steering wheel. Along with many challenges, technical and otherwise, there is one fundamental political question that is too easily brushed aside: Who decides on how transportation algorithms will make decisions about life, death and everything in between?

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"Bryant Walker Smith, assistant professor at the University of South Carolina’s law school, who writes regularly about autonomous driving, said Uber’s training of drivers had to strike a tricky balance. “Give a driver too little to do, and they’ll get complacent. Give them too much to do, and they’ll get overwhelmed,” he said. “It’s possible that Uber’s trying to find the sweet spot between the two.

"The technical detail in the complaint "would only have been possible if Apple complied" with investigators, said Bryant Walker Smith, an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina who has studied issues around autonomous vehicles. Given the fact that even more technical details could come out at trial, "that's striking in its own right" and shows the importance Apple places on protecting its technology, he said."

"University of South Carolina law Professor Bryant Walker Smith, who studies autonomous vehicles, said lanes dedicated to autonomous traffic could accommodate “high-speed platoons of closely spaced vehicles” more easily than ordinary travel lanes, which likely will see autonomous traffic before autonomous-specific lanes open.

"Lyft’s acquisition of Motivate is merely one more step in the ride-hailing industry’s march toward increased dominance in the shared-vehicle market, whether that’s bikes or cars, said Bryant Walker Smith, an affiliate scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. In part, that’s a response to the changing nature of city living and the increasing desire from customers to have more choice and flexibility in the way they move around, he said.

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The ongoing development and ever-increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) is giving rise to some fundamental ethical questions: Will machine-made decisions always be transparent and stay within human-defined parameters? To what extent can users retain control over intelligent algorithms? Is it possible to imbue self-learning systems with a sense of morality? And who decides what moral values these systems should to follow anyway?

Probe the difficult questions that we will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades. Explore the nuances of our future and prepare for the complex problems that will rise as our lives become more A.I. dependent.

Adults 18+ Only.

This program is free thanks to the generosity of the Lowell Institute.

In 2013, Elon Musk proposed an "open source transportation concept" of levitating vehicles zooming passengers through vacuum tubes at 760 miles an hour. It would be weatherproof, energy-efficient, relatively inexpensive, have autonomous controls. Its impact on urban and inter-city transport could reshape economies and families.

U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a hearing on Wednesday, November 16, 2016, at 3:00 p.m. entitled “Exploring Augmented Reality.” The hearing will examine the emergence, benefits, and implications of augmented reality technologies. Unlike virtual reality that creates a wholly simulated reality, augmented reality attempts to superimpose images and visual data on the physical world in an intuitive way.

Witnesses:

• Mr. Brian Blau, Research Vice President, Gartner

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On this week’s FAST FORWARD, FOX Business Network’s Jo Ling Kent looks at how China may be weaponizing foreign web traffic. Also, are we taking steps closer to commercialized drones? We speak with Nabiha Syed, co-founder of Drone U and fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project. Plus, Philip Mudd former analyst and executive at the FBI, CIA and National Security Council fills us in on what life was like as an analyst in the Bush White House. And of course, robots.

The Federal Aviation Administration has released long-awaited proposed rules to regulate commercial drone use. The rules would allow anyone over 17 to take a test to get permission to fly a commercial drone without needing a pilot's license, a key concern of the drone industry.

Commercial drones would have to fly below 500 feet, only during daylight, and always be visible to their operators.